Reddit reviews McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers

Northeast U.S. I am fortunate to have access to land that my family owns on the outskirts of a city. Don't let your situation hold you back though, you can get experience growing things at any scale. I recommend checking out container gardening, helping someone in their garden, finding a community garden you could rent some space in, or volunteering at a farm.

Experiment, fail, learn, and have fun.

You absolutely must get this book: The Bountiful Container. It's said to be the bible for vegetable container gardening, full of info, and it's written so delightfully that you want to run out and plant all the things.

And because Imgur won't let me edit anything in my post via mobile, I will add more info here! I spent about two months researching container growing fruit trees/edible tree/bush before deciding to start with a blood orange and my favorite, lemonade. I'm hoping this helps someone else who might think they can't have a fruit tree due to space.

Although I bought trees on dwarfing rootstock (often called flying dragon rootstock, as that's the plant used to give it stunted growth), you do not need a tree marketed as dwarf. Using a container will naturally impede the process of growth, in addition to pruning.

This is very important because each type of rootstock will give different qualities to the root health. Pick the rootstock that works best for your growing conditions. The book Grow a Little Fruit Tree was invaluable for its information on rootstock alone, although it's geared towards deciduous trees and not evergreens like citrus.

Another helpful book for container gardening that helped me jumpstart my information search was The Bountiful Container. It's American oriented, not Aussie, but lots of helpful principles and ideas all the same.

Another great read, and useful, is this write-up on Daley's Fruit Tree Nursery about using bags (containers) to restrict tree growth in order to net better fruit production. Size restriction can help to produce more per hectare than just letting a tree go (which would be suicide to a home orchard anyways).

Get some self watering pots from Walmart. That's what I started with. They have a reservoir at the bottom that holds water and gets wicked up by the soil to the roots during the day.

You should be able to get these books from your library:

The Vegetable Gardener's Container Bible

and

McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers

These are two of the first books I found on the subject and they came in handy.

I enjoyed The Bountiful Container by Mrs. Stuckey and Nichols McGee. Mrs Nichols McGee runs a nursery not too far from me and I've had the pleasure of emailing with her a few times and she is delightful.

You're supposed to wait until May for a good reason: weather fluctuations. One night of frost will kill seedlings and young plants. Are you starting with seed? Or buying transplants? Transplants are so much easier, but limited on variety. Peppers and tomatoes are great for containers--they love warm soil, which is easier to obtain in a container, and lots of sunshine. Try mini or dwarf versions of each. Mulch around them to protect them from water loss and chilly (but not freezing) nights.

I started gardening in containers, too. This has been my bible: http://www.amazon.com/McGee-Stuckeys-Bountiful-Container-Vegetables/dp/0761116230
There are a surprisingly many things you can grow in pots: herbs, lettuce, green onions, even peaches and apples. The author even suggests specific varieties that are compatible with growing in containers. Good luck.